And Afterwards You Wake Up
by Silvia Kundera
Summary: The further adventures of my fascination with Draco and death related themes. (Harry/Draco. slash)


Title: **And Afterwards You Wake Up**  
Author: Silvia Kundera  
Disclaimer: This story's author does not claim to own any of the characters, concepts, or ideas originating in J. K. Rowlings' Harry Potter novels. No copyright infringement intended. No harm intended. No libel intended. Site material is offered to the public free of charge--not for profit. This piece of fiction is the sole property of the author and cannot be copied, sent, or reproduced without permission of the author.  
Pairing: Draco/Harry  
Summary: and death falls all around you...

*SLASH*  
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This is the day that Draco will do everything different.

He is never late to Potions and so he is late to Potions. He lingers outside the thick wooden doors every classroom has, and thumbs through Pansy's diary. He will surprise her.

They've never spoken much, but sometimes they talk. She seats herself down next to him at the Slytherin table and suggests their mothers have lunch.

* * *

He thinks he will suggest it today, just to see her face.

* * *

His mother said, on his first day of school, "They will love you," and he knew that wasn't exactly what she meant.

They watched him, wide open eyes and little dots for irises. "What are you looking at?" he said, and they just kept watching. They were waiting for him to do something he never did.

It must have been boring.

He did fine, perhaps a measure better than that, and mostly waited to see where he would go next. It would be somewhere expensive, and if it wasn't his father would pay extra. There would be special bills coming by special post, so people would take extra special care of him.

No one had ever told him anything of the sort, but he knew anyway. He knew these things.

He said so to his father and his father laughed and laughed and told him, "So you've at least learned one thing in that old brick pen."

Draco lied and said yes. Yes, that was where he learned it.

* * *

He smokes a cigarette and tells the truth.

The cigarette tastes like rotten raisins and suicide, almost decadent, and so he has another. Each one tastes cleaner, as if they're trading off, as if he's sucking their dirt and grime into his insides and leaving them pure. 

He lets the stupid, silly, _childish_ thought go, collide, pick up momentum. He likes the image of his lungs swollen and discolored with ash -- not quite dramatic enough, but close.

* * *

He doesn't stop at too much; he's foolish.

He finishes the pack and when Blaise comes back in and asks if he's stupid or something he says no. Blaise says, "Do you know the bloody _ trouble_ I get into to pick those up?" and he says yes, he knows, and they hit him until they figure out that he won't tell them to stop.

He wipes the blood off his mouth with the corner of his sleeve and decides to leave his wand on the bedside table and just let it dry. He just _ lets it_.

He isn't fine, he admits when they ask, and they say sorry, they know, oh what he must be going through, and he hates them so viciously that a thick something rushes up his throat from his stomach. He gags on it.

* * *

He is late to dinner (the cabbage got soggy and cold) and eats his sweets last (they still taste like tar) and sits down next to Potter (the bench feels the same and he didn't expect that).

It's nice.

* * *

He says, "Let me walk you to class," when Potter stands, and it means something like _let's fall in love, or not, and get married and live happily ever after and we can visit the Weasleys every Sunday if you want and I'll even try to stand it_and everyone stops and stares and he doesn't much care, honestly.

He doesn't think he can save his soul, doesn't think that would be particularly interesting, and tells Ron so and Ron shuts up.

He holds out his hand and Potter doesn't take it and he says, "_Scared_, Potter?" and actually means it for once. Potter **is**, really **is**, and Draco doesn't blame him.

* * *

He used to blame him for the dew damp grass in the morning and the sheets that twisted wrong in his bed and the scrolls that tore and the lump of salt in his porridge and the pincushion that transfigured into a lopsided sofa and the games that went wrong and the letters he sometimes didn't get from home and the worry that they would stop loving him because he just couldn't _win_ and he'd thought that it mattered.

* * *

He was scared and said, "Mommy," and she didn't answer and neither did his father and they were so _stiff_ and so on and so on. They made somebody mad.

They made someday mad, the end. 

The end and then everything's different, everything, forever and ever, and you don't sleep or feel things in the tips of your fingers or want to laugh or talk much or be anything you ever were before because something is just very _wrong_ about that.

You can't explain it, but there it is.

The end and then everything is different, or at least it should be.

* * *

It will.


End file.
